No, It’s Not Cool To Lose Weight On The Stomach Flu

I had norovirus, the kind where you are this pathetic, shivering creature crouched on the ground beside the toilet at 3:47 a.m. In the process of this unwelcome “total body cleanse,” pounds fell off my body.

Okay, they didn’t fall. But providing accurate detail about what happened is too disgusting.

It’s at least as disgusting that it’s an option to say someone looks good after they’ve been sick, or that it’s cool to lose weight on illness.

Not that my post-eating disorder brain wasn’t willing to play this trick on me. Of course I stepped on the scale after that night from hell, and of course it was shocking how much weight I lost.

The way to look radiant is to feel radiant, and the way to feel radiant is to possess outrageous courage in a world that tells women we must keep ourselves in check, in line. Losing weight is not an act of courage. Losing weight possesses no intrinsic value, but we do — and it’s a radical act to accept ourselves as we are.

I’ve probably gained all my norovirus weight back by now, and thank goodness. My body knows exactly which size it wants to be, and I’m proud to have flipped my old eating disorder the bird one more time.

Every day presents these little opportunities for resistance. Against our own demons, and/or against societal things that suck. We should be so grateful to take them all.

2 thoughts on “No, It’s Not Cool To Lose Weight On The Stomach Flu”

I remember being 16 and getting a bad stomach virus and losing 10 pounds and everyone commenting how great I looked- and for years attaching that number on the scale to being seen- It’s taken awhile to train my mind to think differently and I find myself still at battle within myself some days. Kudos to you for giving your old disorder the finger. I love this, “my body knows exactly what what size it wants to be.”